Foreword: The following Summary Report, based on two years of research and some two dozen individual studies by a team of Costa Rican and U.S. experts, offers the first multidimensional analysis of the phenomena that Costa Ricans have dubbed "residential tourism." While this term has become popular, most Costa Ricans have had little understanding of its dimensions and implications for the country, the country's Pacific coast, or Costa Rica's tourism industry. The study traces the origins of this coastal transformation from the 1970s to the present, with particular focus on the real estate and construction boom and bust (caused by the global economic crisis) from 2002 through 2009. As members of the Advisory Committee that has assisted the researchteam, we believe that the study's findings and recommendations can play a constructive role in helping to foment public discussion, civic engagement, and policy reforms to ensure a sustainable economy in coastal and marine tourism. Over the last decade, Costa Rica's Pacific coast has become one of the epicenters in the Americas for rapid beach resort and vacation home development closely tied to the U.S. market. Together with cruise ship tourism, residential tourism is transforming swaths of the physical landscape and displacing or competing for resources with many fishing, farming, and ranching communities in the coastal zone. Sun-and-sand resort and cruise tourism has the potential to conflict with Costa Rica's well-deserved international reputation for high-value, nature-based tourism, commonly known as ecotourism. Indeed, Costa Rica's Pacific coast has been a kind of "laboratory" in which an experiment with different models of tourism -- residential tourism (all-inclusive resort and vacation home developments), cruise tourism, and ecotourism/sustainable tourism have, in effect, been run. We concur with the Summary Report's finding of abundant and strong evidence favoring one model --ecotourism/sustainable tourism --over the others, as the most overall beneficial for Costa Rica. While resort, residential, and cruise tourism will, of course, continue to be slices of Costa Rica's tourism offerings, they need to be demarked with careful planning and clear limitations, just as does any other kind of development. We believe that Costa Rica is best served by redoubling its efforts to support and promote high-value, nature-based tourism grounded in sound environmental and social principles and practices. (Signed: Tamara Budowski; Pedro León; Carlos Manuel Echeverría; Margarita Penón; Daniel Janzen; Alvaro Umaña)